Why the New Apple MacBook Pro is the Worst Computer for Argentina

The new Apple MacBook Pro may be the most beautiful laptop ever created, but is probably the worst one to own in Argentina.

I’ve needed to replace my old MacBook Pro for awhile now and was waiting patiently for last week’s announcement from Apple of their newest models.

The announcement turned out to be worth the wait as they announced their beautiful, new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. The retina display, solid state drive and thin size make this new MacBook a technophile’s dream. Unfortunately, all this tech comes at a price – the base model starts at $2199 and goes up to $3749 fully configured. Ouch! Luckily, that’s what credit cards are for. 🙂

I have the added benefit of being in the States at the moment, which means that I can actually get this laptop (it is not available in Argentina due to import restrictions).

Unfortunately, despite all my excitement, I’ve come to realize that this is the worst possible laptop to own in Argentina.

iFixit published a report that due to Apple’s design decisions, this is the least repairable laptop ever made. The display is fused to the glass, the RAM is soldered to the logic board and the battery is glued to the case. Pretty much any repair, including a simple battery replacement, will require that the whole laptop is sent to Apple. And, as anyone who has been in Argentina knows, this is pretty much impossible from here.

Yep, any repair will require that you take a trip to the US, send the laptop to Apple, wait to get it back, and then come back to Argentina. You’ll pretty much need a backup laptop to use while your main laptop is gone too, so be sure you don’t resell that old laptop either…

Looks like the new MacBook Pros without the retina display and the standard hard drive and memory slots would make a more logical choice, but That’s such a disappointment. I know what the practical choice is, but practical is not sexy. And who said anything about being practical anyhow, right? For that I could just buy a PC laptop for under a thousand bucks.

I’m going to have to make a trip to the Apple Store and compare these two side-by-side…

UPDATE: So of course, the first problem is reported regarding some of these new MacBook Pro’s with retina display. It appears that some of these displays have a ghosting problem and Apple is replacing them as needed. Not an option if you had it in Buenos Aires.